‘Queen of the world’: experiences of ‘at-risk’ young people participating in equine-assisted learning/therapy

There is a significant body of research into the benefits of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) but less into the fields known as equine-assisted learning and therapy (EAL/EAT) where horses are incorporated in therapeutic and learning interventions. This paper explores the experiences of seven ‘at-risk’ young people who participated in a therapeutic horsemanship (TH) programme. The study followed a practice-near approach seeking to capture the young people's experiences within a participative ethnography. Themes related to the risk and resilience literature such as self-confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy and a sense of mastery, empathy and the opening of positive opportunities are explored in this paper.     

‘Becoming familiar with a world’: a relational view of socialization

Ethnographic data have frequently been used to examine socialization, but rarely to ground theories of socialization. This paper is an exception. Interest in indigenous representations emerging in situations involving socialization has led to the building of a relational model of socialization, which contrasts with mainstream developmental models of this phenomenon. Socialization is generally defined in terms of cultural learning, the internalization of culture or culture acquisition, that is in terms of the individual's development. The present paper defines it in terms of becoming familiar with a new ‘world’, and a series of changes affecting the structure of the relationship between the human agent and this new world. These structural changes include immersion in a world that is at first strange; subjection to the authority of this world on the basis of acceptance of this authority; and involvement in the world's everyday life structures and activities through doing.     

Older Workers: The ‘Unavoidable Obligation’ of Extending Our Working Lives?

Older workers are becoming an increasing topic of research interest and policy concern as the populations of Europe, the United States and many other countries age. Some commentators argue that living longer means that there will be an ‘unavoidable obligation’ to work for longer as well. This article considers the reasons for concern about an ageing workforce. It then looks at the different literatures, which seek to research and understand the position of older workers. It provides a snapshot of the work that those over 50 years of age in the UK currently do and poses the question of whether we want to work for longer or whether a culture of early retirement prevails. It concludes by arguing for a more fine grained understanding of the composition of the older worker cohort, differentiated by class, gender and race and for more research on flexible work, gradual retirement and managing health at work.     

Troubling constructions of Canada as a ‘land of opportunity’ for immigrants: a critical disability lens

This article presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis study of the constructions of people with disabilities within the Canadian immigration system and how this shapes the immigration experiences of people with disabilities, especially those from countries in the Global South. Findings suggest that dominant discourses of opportunities not only construct Canada as a ‘land of dreams’ for immigrants and newcomers but are also used to hide, justify, normalize and facilitate the operation of ableist, racist and colonial discourses that immigrants and newcomers with disabilities experience during their immigration. Recommendations for settlement workers involved in facilitating the settlement and integration process for immigrants and newcomers with disabilities are also presented. The article concludes by emphasizing the actual and potential contributions of postcolonial and critical disability lenses for a social justice-oriented practice at the intersection of disability and immigration.     

Coffee by women: the ‘duty of ethical enjoyment’

This article explores the contemporary trend of deploying feminist values in the case of ethical branding. Using the psychoanalytical concepts logics of fantasy and enjoyment, we analyse the campaign by Swedish coffee brand Zoégas, Coffee by Women, to understand how a combination of development discourse, ‘women’s empowerment’ and the opportunity to ‘do good’ is employed to sell coffee. The analysis shows that the campaign depicts the threat of a future lack of coffee, creating anxiety in the consumer, supposedly motivating her to purchase Zoégas, as Coffee by Women is claimed to secure and educate new generations of coffee farmers. Simultaneously, this is presented as ‘empowering women’ in the global South. We argue that this narrative builds on a colonial fantasy of global sisterhood and shared interests that works to conceal the political conflicts connected to global trade and climate change. Through a commodification of feminist values and aesthetics, this fantasy works to redirect the desire for social change towards consumption, offering an enjoyable solution that disregards any wider responsibility. It has been argued that the structure of the social bond before the era of mass consumption was characterized by a prohibition on individual enjoyment for the benefit of the common good. After the arrival of mass consumption, the social bond instead became marked by a duty to enjoy. In the contemporary context of ethical capitalism, we suggest that the social bond is rather structured by a ‘duty of ethical enjoyment’, containing elements of both prohibition and pleasure.     

Monotonicity of ‘ranking by choosing’: A progress report

Procedures designed to select alternatives on the basis of the results of pairwise contests between them have received much attention in literature. The particular case of tournaments has been studied in depth. More recently weak tournaments and valued generalizations thereof have been investigated.The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent these choice procedures may be meaningfully used to define ranking procedures via their repeated use, i.e. when the equivalence classes of the ranking are determined by successive applications of the choice procedure. This is what we call ranking by choosing. As could be expected, such ranking procedures raise monotonicity problems. We analyze these problems and show that it is nevertheless possible to isolate a large class of well-behaved choice procedures for which failures of monotonicity are not overly serious. The hope of finding really attractive ranking by choosing procedures is however shown to be limited. Our results are illustrated on the case of tournaments.I am grateful to Hervé Raynaud and Jean-Claude Vansnick for stimulating discussions. Jean-François Laslier, Thierry Marchant, Bernard Monjardet, Xavier Juret and an anonymous referee made very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this text. Special thanks go to Patrice Perny who introduced me to the subject and to Olivier Hudry for his help with Slater orders. The usual caveat applies. Part of this work was accomplished while I was visiting the Service de Mathématiques de la Gestion at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium). I gratefully acknowledge the warm hospitality of the Service de Mathématique de la Gestion as well as the support from the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique and the Brussels-Capital Region through a Research in Brussels action grant.     

Narratives of ‘mixed race’ youth in South Korea: racial order and in-betweenness

South Korea has long been regarded as a country with a single ethnicity. Honhyeol, which literally means ‘mixed blood’ in Korean, exemplifies this orientation. In recent years, the number of ‘mixed race’ children in the country has been on the rise due to the increase in international marriages, particularly between Korean men and foreign women. Drawing on the personal narratives of 56 youths (aged between 9 and 17) obtained from three essay contests, this article examines how, why, and in which contexts the racial hierarchies of ‘mixed race’ children in Korea are constructed. Narratives of ‘mixed race’ children and their peers show that a ‘hierarchical racial order’ – characterized by a color-coding system that simultaneously operates along the lines of national origin – is channeled into ‘mixed race’ people’s everyday lives, thus shaping their identity constructions.     

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world: exploring critical cosmopolitanism through cartographic critique

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world is thought to date from the late sixteenth century and is often attributed to a little-known Christian sect called the Familists. It places a map of the world in the place of a face inside a jester’s cap, playing upon the subversive figure of the jester and his ability to ridicule those in control. The Familists were cosmopolitan and valued the idea of the world citizen, but insisted upon self-reflection, in ways not dissimilar to contemporary scholars of ‘critical cosmopolitan’. This article makes a case for viewing the Familists’ thinking as an early form of critical cosmopolitanism – critiquing its own culture whilst maintaining belief in what constitutes a good ethical world citizen. It engages with the debates forged by thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Gerard Delanty, and links these to the idea of emancipatory potential of globalization advanced by Leslie Sklair.     

‘Street-level bureaucracy,management and the corrupted world of service’

Lipsky's analysis of the implementation gap in welfare policy in ‘Street-level Bureaucracy’ focuses on the problem of front-line discretion but ‘brackets off’ the discretion of senior managers. In this paper I draw on a qualitative study to argue that senior managers can also exercise significant discretion and that their discretion can contribute to the conditions of policy confusion and contradiction, and resource inadequacy that characterise ‘the corrupted world of service’ of front-line discretion. In this context front-line discretion may be used by front-line staff to bridge the policy implementation gap created by senior managers.     

‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a mode of regulation by design

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on regulatory governance scholarship to argue that the analytic phenomenon currently known as ‘Big Data’ can be understood as a mode of ‘design-based’ regulation. Although Big Data decision-making technologies can take the form of automated decision-making systems, this paper focuses on algorithmic decision-guidance techniques. By highlighting correlations between data items that would not otherwise be observable, these techniques are being used to shape the informational choice context in which individual decision-making occurs, with the aim of channelling attention and decision-making in directions preferred by the ‘choice architect’. By relying upon the use of ‘nudge’ – a particular form of choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives, these techniques constitute a ‘soft’ form of design-based control. But, unlike the static Nudges popularised by Thaler and Sunstein [(2008). Nudge. London: Penguin Books] such as placing the salad in front of the lasagne to encourage healthy eating, Big Data analytic nudges are extremely powerful and potent due to their networked, continuously updated, dynamic and pervasive nature (hence ‘hypernudge’). I adopt a liberal, rights-based critique of these techniques, contrasting liberal theoretical accounts with selective insights from science and technology studies (STS) and surveillance studies on the other. I argue that concerns about the legitimacy of these techniques are not satisfactorily resolved through reliance on individual notice and consent, touching upon the troubling implications for democracy and human flourishing if Big Data analytic techniques driven by commercial self-interest continue their onward march unchecked by effective and legitimate constraints.     

‘I was bored so…’: motivational accounts of participation in an online emo group

We examine members' spontaneous accounts for joining and participating in an online emo forum. The Internet and social networking sites are central features of contemporary youth cultures; the analysis of interaction on emo forums can thus provide a way of appreciating emo as a ‘Community in Practice’. We analyse popular discussion threads collected from a key emo website, using membership categorisation and conversation analysis. In these threads, members introduce themselves and account for joining and posting pictures in response to a prior request to do so. Analysis shows that newbies establish their emo attributes and hence entitlement to participate while dismissing emo-related motivation for joining the forum, claiming instead a desire to relieve boredom. Participants similarly accounted for posting photos of themselves and for producing fan pics as due to boredom. We show how claiming to be bored allows members to engage with the group while negotiating potentially problematic inferences that attend subcultural membership. We conclude that our approach provides a useful methodology for furthering our understanding of an important aspect of contemporary youth subcultures.     

Hunting ruralities: nature,society and culture in ‘hunt countries’ of England and Wales

The practice of hunting with dogs in the British countryside has received a great deal of political attention over recent years. The election of the New Labour Government in 1997, with a manifesto commitment to allow a free parliamentary vote on hunting, has provided the campaign to abolish hunting with a great deal of momentum. However, a merger of the pro-hunt groups into the Countryside Alliance has created a powerful counter campaign, evidenced by the highly publicised countryside marches of the late 1990s. A key tactic of the Alliance's campaign has involved a key shift in the defence of hunting from the natural to the social realm, with the focus increasingly placed on the claimed socio-cultural contribution of hunting to rural communities. This paper assesses the merits of this claim by providing a critical in-depth exploration of the socio-cultural role of hunting with dogs in areas of the English and Welsh countryside. It does this in two main ways. Firstly, recent discussions of hunting are positioned within a broader social science context of nature–society relations, and consideration is given to the complex connections between hunting, nature and rurality. Secondly, connections between hunting, nature and rural society are examined in greater depth by drawing on key findings from a recent study of the social and cultural role of hunting in four areas of English and Welsh countryside.     

‘He was a secret’: family narratives and the institutionalization of people with intellectual disabilities

This article examines family narratives concerning the existence of an institutionalized family member with an intellectual disability. A research study investigating the experiences of institutional survivors and members of their families in post-World War II Ontario, Canada reveals ambiguous family narratives in which the story of an institutionalized family member with an intellectual disability was absent or uncertain. Secretive family narratives and their impact on family life are discussed from the perspectives of siblings of institutional survivors. Drawing from narrative enquiry literature, the potential repercussions of false or ambiguous narratives on the lives of people with intellectual disabilities are also examined.     

Rowing ‘at home’ and ‘away’: sport,heritage and identity in the Malay world

This paper is grounded in a comparison of the cultural identifications that accompany Sambas Malays’ participation in rowing competitions ‘at home’ and ‘away’. Sambas Malays are Indonesian citizens from the regency of Sambas, who ethnically identify as Malay. There, rowing competitions provide the sociocultural infrastructure for developing local and translocal cultural identifications. Two related, yet distinguishable, cultural identifications are evident, each associated with a specific rowing infrastructure. When contests occur ‘at home’, rowing is steeped in local Sambas Malay culture and heritage. However, contests ‘away’, in areas loosely identified as ‘Malay’, generate identifications with a regionally based Malay culture and consociality. Utilizing a non-positivistic conceptualization of ‘border’, this paper considers the intersection of culture, politics, economy, geography and mobility in everyday bordering practices producing two overlapping cultural identifications.     

From ‘for’ to ‘of’: a typology of Maltese disability organisations

The main aim of this article is to adapt the Typology of Disability Organisations that Oliver devised, and subsequently developed further in 1990, to a different context, in this case the Maltese disability sector. The paper first traces the history of the disabled people’s movement and presents Oliver’s Typology, which makes a clear distinction between organisations for and of disabled persons. The article then highlights the main characteristics of the Maltese disability sector and develops the Typology of the organisations operating within that sector. It shows how it is non-disabled people that are mostly in control of disability organisations, and suggests ways in which there can be a stronger movement towards the development and strengthening of disabled people’s organisations. The article shows how Oliver’s Typology can be used flexibly and adapted to various contexts. It also shows how drawing up a Typology of Disability Organisations can shed light on the environment within which these organisations operate, identifying areas of strength and possible areas for growth.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

Demonizing the Sensible and the ‘Revolution of Our Generation’ in Rosia Montana

Abstract

‘Save Rosia Montana’ is an emblematic socio-ecological movement in post-communist Romania. It started in 2000 as a local reaction against what was projected to be the largest open-cast gold mine in Europe; it has gradually grown into a national movement with global networking. Activists have been consistently accused of acting under the impulse of an emotional luggage which could function as an impediment to understanding the ‘real’ issue, that of Romania's development. While the corporation claims to present the ‘real’ story articulated in the supposedly objective discourse of rational science, the choice to take a stance out of other beliefs has been demonized as emotional. This article will make a critical discourse analysis of corporate texts and Rosieni's testimonies to highlight what appears as ‘legitimate’ versus ‘illegitimate’ discourse, how some phrases are presented as self-evident rationales while others are dismissed as inappropriate or ‘emotional’. Rosieni have created visibilities for new things, objects, languages, and projections that have been downplayed by the post-communist political context. The conflict is not just over cognitive aspects or valuation languages but also over how one is allowed to feel, what one is allowed to enjoy (doing), how is one supposed to live (spend time), what Ranciere calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’.